Where Did Fox Chatterbox Jason Chaffetz Buy That '$90 Turkey'?
Jason Chaffetz
Republicans making outrageous claims about what they’ve spent on ordinary purchases is becoming its own genre during Joe Biden’s presidency. Former congressman and current Fox News commentator Jason Chaffetz would like to contribute a claim about a $90 turkey to that discourse.
“We went to go buy a turkey today. It was $90 for a turkey!” Chaffetz half-shouted, disbelievingly. “The price of stamps is up 32 percent in the last four years. But it’s all a choice by Joe Biden. That is what Bidenomics is.”
It’s a short quote, but there’s a lot to unpack. (As a side note, postage prices are not set by the president, and “the last four years” would include more than a year of Donald Trump’s presidency.)
The most likely case is that Chaffetz was lying about the price of that turkey. He’s a Republican on Fox News—it’s not a stretch to suspect that.
Frozen turkey prices have dropped in recent months, down to $1.25 per pound in September. That’s 43 cents a pound cheaper than a year earlier. Unless Chaffetz was somehow sourcing a 70-pound turkey, he was paying well above the average price per pound. If he was buying an organic turkey at my local Whole Foods, $90 would get him a bird a little over 20 pounds. Who knows, maybe he was getting a 10-pound turkey at a high-end specialty butcher.
Regardless, your average American shopper is not stuck paying $90 for an average-sized turkey. But why wouldn’t Chaffetz lie (again, the most likely scenario here)? Fox News viewers, even ones who know damn well that they did not pay anything like $90 for their turkey, were probably nodding along with him. Chaffetz is part of a well-oiled propaganda machine constantly working to make Americans think things are worse than they are.
Reprinted with permission from Daily Kos.
